


Ex Astris

by softlyinthestreetlights



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/F, emotionally constipated Vulcans, i'm just in it for the girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2233560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyinthestreetlights/pseuds/softlyinthestreetlights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And maybe firing back had been a mistake because if Jo wasn’t radiating before she is now. “So you’ve noticed. Great.”  For a moment the stars outside the ship seem dull to the shine that’s in Jo’s eye. She is a benevolent God, and Anna forgets to breathe.</p>
<p>The beginnings of a partnership between Jo Harvelle and Anna Novak, for even when the sun is gray and lifeless there are people who shine bright enough to scare away the dark. Space!AU containing the over use of space metaphors and emotionally constipated Vulcans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ex Astris

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. So here we are. Wow. To be honest there were a lot of points I didn't think I'd make it through. I'm glad for the very generous support I received from the Mod and from my artist, Kit, whose enthusiasm made me feel guilty enough to finish. You should totally check out his art @kitbgoode and when I get a link for the art he did I'll be sure to include a link here.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoy. LLAP

  
_Ex astris, maior  
(From the stars, greater)_  
Stardate 2670.43

Dean’s office is nice. Pleasant. Meticulously organized. Not something you’d expect from a man who spends his shore leave covered in grease and buried under the hood of every messed up car he could get his hands on. But as Anna steps into the office she’s not surprised to see he’s added flowers, pink ones, amidst the collection of Rock memorabilia and numerous piles of staff reports.

“Captain? You wanted to see me.”

“Anna, yeah take a seat.” His smile looks a bit tired, frayed around the edges like he’s worn it too often. “I just haven’t had the chance to review this file with Cas yet. I wanted a second opinion.”

“It’s not too much trouble, sir.” 

Dean had a talent for picking officers. To be spotted in the crowd of nameless faces was sometimes said to be like receiving divine inheritance. A little bit melodramatic but she supposed occasionally true.

Dean slid the data PADD over. A new cadet named Jo Harvelle, set on the track for engineering but she could just as easily be reassigned to command. The language of statistics was an easy one to read. Test scores easily averaged out and filed away into backwater databases. But Jo was something else. Born in small town Iowa, father deceased with his name highlighted for further reading, and hand eye coordination was very high. Foundation degrees with no limited or apprenticeship experience. There were other links to videos of training exercises and voice comments concerning qualifications and capabilities. She opened some, skimming through one of the vids from Entrance Exams, done on Relva VI, specifically her psychological profile. Stubborn, mildly empathic, too sure of herself, and no recipe was complete without a mild case of daddy issues. What joy.

“So what do you think?” Winchester said.

A decade of space travel and she had never seen brain scans like this. They were stunning. The centers of her brain, all 10, 000 neurons firing in a surreal type of symmetry. You could take a snapshot and hang it in a gallery. With more than 15,000 synapses per neuron, how was that not something beautiful? “While she looks glossy on the cover of Flirty Fleet I think that she’s a possible risk. She exhibits disregard for her personal safety and by default the safety of others, and I don’t think she should be allowed within ten feet of any control panel much less the core of the USS Domina. Should only chance save us.”

Dean smiled a real smile, amused with teeth showing and glowing under the hydro powered lights, “So you like her then. Great.”

\--

Hangovers in space were just as bad as hangovers on Earth. First day meeting the Captain of Legends and she felt absolutely decrepit. But alcohol saturated state or not wouldn’t matter much unless she found the right dock. Reporting for new assignments was always a little odd. The space station was a sprawling structure with some 300 docking points per port. A whole space community for little space cadets with tiny phasers and pint sized brains.

The reconstructed USS Domina was the largest ship that Starfleet had ever commissioned. Innovated so that the command disk could detach as one of Fleets precautions to make sure what happened to her Dad could be preventable, in case of emergency. It looked good for PR but was never a comfort.  
Dean Winchester fit the role of Captain effortlessly. Handsome, uncharacteristically smart, and charismatic, he was really Fleet’s own little wet dream. She buzzes the intercom,  
and he stands to greet her.

“Hello, Jo Harvelle?”

“Yes, sir.” She returns his slight bow, and because it feels right: “Captain.”

He accepts the title with practiced grace, the tips of his ears flushing. The office is nice, with fresh flowers standing guard at the door; if she’s not mistaken they’re lily-rose hybrids. And even though she never would have expected Dean to be a flowers kind of man but it’s actually very nice. It’s not until they’re sitting, cushioned by unbearably  
comfortable chairs that Jo sees her.

It’s like someone decided to jab a tuning fork directly into her bones. The upturned eyebrows and the thick, violet colored eyelids give her away. A Vulcan. She’d be damned if this one was just naturally stunning.

“Annael will be your mentor during the next few weeks while we repair the Domina. Then we ship out on a routine mission to Taurus VI. You’ve been assigned to engineering under Bobby Singer, correct?” 

“Yes sir.”

“Okay, that’s good. There’s not much more I can tell you other than don’t pull any red levers.” He shakes her hand. “Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you sir.”

After that Winchester all but shoos them out, leaving her alone with the Vulcan, Annael.

“So you’re like… my superior?” And Jo can see that the flirty smile isn’t lost on her, because the tight look on her face just gets tighter. It’s funny. Teasing Vulcans might just become her new favorite past time.

\--

“So wait, you’re a medical officer, right?”

Jo tags along after her, skipping a bit to keep up with Anna’s longer strides.

“Correct. As you familiarize yourself with all the dangers engineering has to offer I will the one who gives you a Band-Aid and sends you back on your way. Try not to waste my time.”

Jo rolls her eyes, “Only for the best of causes Doc, I assure you.”

“If that was a Bugs Bunny reference then it might interest you to know that the show was cancelled in the year 2000.”

Jo rolls her eyes and tries not to think about how her great, great, great granddaughter has been doing just fine, “Just enjoy the nickname.”

“I’m sure I won’t.”

“It’ll grow on you.”

“Not it won’t.”

“Just you try.”

\--

In the weeks before they set course for Taurus easy banter becomes a part of life for Anna. Everything from the speciation’s response to fight or flight to stupid math jokes. Less and less things seem black and white, the world a stark mass in spectrums of gray. Streaks of blonde catch her eye in corridors and smudges of grease replacer get wiped off of the same spot on Jo’s temple every day.

Jo hops up onto an empty bio bed and fixes Anna with a most serious expression. “Did you know 3 out of 2 people struggle to understand fractions?”

Anna puts down her scanner. “You couldn’t come up with anything better than that?”

Jo leans back on the bio bed like she has nowhere else to be. And while she probably doesn’t, and Anna has the authority to kick her out, she doesn’t. This is regular now. Routine. “Eh.” Jo says, scrunching her face at some dials near the headboard, “What can I say? I get away with it. I’m hot stuff.”

“Not as hot as you think you are.”

And maybe firing back had been a mistake because if Jo wasn’t radiating before she is now. “So you’ve noticed. Great.” For a moment the stars outside the ship seem dull to the shine that’s in Jo’s eye. She is a benevolent God, and Anna forgets to breathe.

\--

Castiel is already putting things away in his quarters when Anna comes in. “You’ve been playing matchmaker for me.” It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened but it’s a fact.

“Jo Harvelle isn’t the worst person to be set up with.”

“I have expressed disinterest in finding someone, and yet you are persistent.”

Castiel sighed, “You aren’t happy, Anna.”

“I determine my own path to happiness. It is not your place to judge. I was fine on my own.” 

Castiel doesn’t even look up from folding, a small smile tilting up on the corners of his mouth. “But better now.” It’s not treated as a question. Somewhere in space a star goes supernova and casts arcs of red and gold and green across the sky. They travel closer to the edge of the universe with every second and the pitfalls still aren’t covered.

(There’s still plenty of time to fall.)

\--

Jo was buried under the console. Fixing the ship had a full time work force, crews of engineers scurrying around with tool belts and crew cuts. Jo works solo on small circuit repairs, refusing to cut her blonde hair and leaving stray patches of static electricity for Anna to find in the dead of the night and plenty of afternoon. Sometimes the pad of her finger tingles from where Jo touched the space just before and somehow she sleeps easier at night. 

“Hey could you pass me that?”

Anna passes Jo what she thinks she was asking for, fingers brushing along Jo’s for the briefest of seconds, but it’s long enough.

She knows Jo also thinks it’s a mistake by the way Jo stiffens and peers up at her from the floor, her face a mask of hidden constellations and grease replacer. “I forgot you’d be a touch telepath.” She might flush or hit the wrong circuit, her cheeks tinge pink and she looks back at the open panel where the circuits are still glowing. “It’s always strange, you know? For psi-null people it wouldn’t be a problem but I’m that little bit empathic and sometimes it’s just weird y’know?” 

“Have you ever tried suppressants?” 

It’s meant to be an offhand comment, but Jo flinches and misses her chance to set the control, “No.”

She knows that for people like Jo, and like her, many would rather live with the consequences. As if thoughts and feelings from one mind weren’t enough. Eventually it becomes second nature, another limb. Feeling out the world in more than light and sound but tapping into the bridge between organisms and the world around them. It sounds very hippie. It’s also very real. 

“Is it Betazoid?”

“Less than an eighth, yeah. You don’t have to worry I’m not strong enough to scan your brains out.” Jo puts the cover panel back under the console and wipes her face on her shirt. 

“What’s next, Doc?”

“Some phasers on C Deck, but I can hand that off.”

“No I can do it. Go get lunch or something.”

Anna waves her off, tapping something imaginary into her PADD and pointedly not looking up. “The vegetarian options are unsightly, especially for what’s supposed to be a high class vessel. I can accompany.” 

Jo knows they’re not. She’s seen them, all laid out in rows and cubes of inviting colors. Hell if she wasn’t such a carnivore she’d have seduced one of the ensigns to hand feed them to her. But Anna is no ensign and if her friend wants to develop a (horrid) sense of sarcasm then that’s okay. “Come on then.”

\--

Anna takes another stab at the greens on her plate. Jo sits across the table watching her with amused interest. “After you’re done trying to pretend like you don’t want to shove the whole god damn selection down your throat I’ve got time for chess.” She coughs. “If you’d like to anyways.”

“Is this another attempt at companionship?”

Jo gives her a slow easy smile, too akin to Winchester’s as to make it uncanny. “Wouldn’t be an attempt if you said ‘Yes’ now would it?”

Anna does _not_ frown into her spinach. “No. I suppose not.”

The way to HoloDeck C is spent in awkward silence.

When they get there the HoloDeck is unoccupied. Stepping inside the grid changes so that they stand along the water under a roof of blinking stars, bleary under an imagined atmosphere.

She’s from a desert planet, and just like the stars, blearily, she realizes that she’s never seen so much water in one place before. The wind swept desert and stinging sand, swirls of Jupiter orange and Mercury red were the colors she called familiar. A planet lost forever, only memories of shifting red sands and two suns circling in the sky like sehlats around nothing. But water is something abstract, the texture strange and unshapeable. 

(If the description fits.)

The curling wake spirals into the shoreline, leaving nothing but rocky soil behind. The waves are one abyss with a million eyes that follow her as she takes her place beside Jo, her side of the board already set up and waiting.

“I do not remember this program.”

Jo smiles, nervous, like they’re exchanging gifts, “You wouldn’t. I’m projecting it.”

Anna can’t keep both of her eyebrows from rising. “You’re projecting this?”

“Yeah. I thought it’d be nice.” Jo counteracts Anna’s next move before she has a chance to make it and looks around.

Despite how strange water is the picture Jo makes really is beautiful. She cannot see where the water ends, if it ends at all. The depression where they do battle with rocket ships and rooks, everything is above Earth. Everything about Jo is like this. High. Crashes against the Earth sound like life support and the above stars winking like monitors. The second 

home of the universe in a bottled up jar.

“Check.” Jo is losing, and not by choice this time. She either has to move her knight or sacrifice her queen. She will lose both.

“You’re good.”

“Just as you expected me to be.” Jo chooses to move her knight and Anna moves her rook to intercept one of her pawns on its way to her side. “You expressed desire for an equal.”

“And you wanted to be that?”

Anna considers her question but does not hesitate to answer, “Yes. I find myself at ease with knowing that I have an equal as well.”

\--

Where regular banter stems off it is replaced by chess. Sometimes they play in the steady thrum of Med Bay and sometimes on a HoloDeck. Jo comes up with another projection that takes Anna’s breath away and soon she loses her previous winning streak. It’s quite distracting. The detail of such things has always managed to escape her, the tadpole you can see but never quite catch. Jo forces her to see things. Gray and streaks of blonde turning into multicolor. Light is vivid. The frequency upon which the universe echoes her own sound back to her is more than white noise. It makes sense.

“I’m not telepathic, like at all, so it’s more about the feeling I put out there. What you see is the realistic representation of my feeling rather than an actual picture.”

“You have vivid emotions.”

“I’m sure you do too, Doc.”

While mind melds are possible, as the line between two people blurs into one and a half, it’s not something to do with everyone. The only person Anna has ever trusted with the sanctity of her mind has been Castiel. A temple, seleya, among the metaphorical lofty mountain, clouded with mist in thin air. Unbreathable. Uninhabitable. Climbers die trying to peer over the edge. A levee made of fear, caught in the riptide of unknown throats. She doesn’t know that she’ll ever trust someone else that much.

(Does one possess the capacity for that much trust?)

Despite keeping her head locked away, she visits it almost every day. Meditating in the free hour between the end of her last shift and the time lights dim. Sunset trying to exist in space, where suns never truly set. (Just coming apart and crashing back together.) It’s time to sort through memories, thoughts, and sensations and organize them. Emotions slide into place like pieces in a puzzle. Labelled, recognized, and controlled, they do not intrude.

An extravagant filing system.

Castiel called it decadent. Pure indulgence. Maybe it was. She’d always put a lot of effort into making her mind a visually pleasing place to be. She planned on spending a lot of time there. Playing chess with Jo was like that, peaceful and meditative in a way that being awake had not been in a very long time.

\--

Days in space soon become uneventful. They’d set course for Taurus VI at the crack of dawn, which was an obscene time to be awake. Even something about Anna seemed off. She’d gone to one of the better replicators and gotten a cup of coffee. It was more expensive on starships, and even though it made no damn sense she ended up forking over the few extras credits in an attempt to appear like she was awake and totally not about to fall asleep on her console _the first day on her first shift._

Anna is there, shadowing Castiel. Her blue shirt a bright spot amidst the yellow and blue.

“What none for me?” Anna breathes in the coffee vapors next to her and Jo smiles.

“Didn’t see the point in such a vulgar waste of a limited resource.” Vulcans were immune to the effects of caffeine and sapotoxins. “You shouldn’t even be tired.”

Anna narrows her eyes, “I prefer to get in at least two hours, which I did not get. Besides,” she says, groaning, “It’s annoying when it smells so good.”

The ship lurched as they went into WARP, causing the rim of Jo’s cup to crash and burn. Anna almost laughs. Kevin really shouldn’t mess with the breaks like that.

\--

One evening Jo reports to Med Bay with her first injury.

Jo hisses, “Ah Jesus, don’t touch it.”

Anna won’t answer, as the squirmy human has a steam burn. The entire area is red, skin peeling and raw. Even with all the healing technology they have it will still leave a small scar. “Hold still.”

Jo rests her head against the wall, closing her eyes and wincing at everything. “We can’t all be statues in the face of certain death.”

She gets to leave half an hour later with a new bandage and is the receiver of several deserved glares.

\--

They’re playing chess again, the board balanced somewhat precariously on the edge of a table also occupied with several large pieces of ‘in the process of being repaired’ medical equipment. The only quiet space.

When Jo turns Anna can see freckles dancing along the bridge of her nose, along her cheeks, and the couple disappearing into her hair line. She’s wearing a small smile. It’s fond, amused, and very impressed.

Anna wins more often than they draw, Jo’s price for losing: a cup of nice replicated hazelnut coffee (the good kind that doesn’t have a layer of sludge resting with impending (doom at the bottom) and half a packet of sugar. 

\--

“What must it be like?”

They are spread on their backs, expanses of water traded for a blanket of soft grasses. Jo thinks its very Lion King. Personally, Anna thinks it’s just nice.

Jo often wonders about how Anna’s mind works, talking about it as if it is the unreachable and unknown. To an extent it is. To an extent it doesn’t have to be.

“It’s second nature. And similar to how there are different ways to see things, the color spectrum, infrared, x-ray, echolocation, and so on. It’s another way of feeling out the space around you. Simply another method of communication. I am sure if you were open to the same channels you would find that your mind is not as inadequate as you think it is.” Anna means every word. She already knows that Jo’s mind warm, because she’s been exposed to that warmth before, whenever Jo touches her hand and when they play chess. Lingering electroshocks and spots of grease replacer steadily becoming something addicting and comfortable.

“I don’t mediate or anything like I’m sure you do. I’ve never really been into all that, you know?” For a second Anna is curious. It would be like having a door to your home that you never open. Maybe someone died there, or used to call it home but has since left. That would be… amputation. A phantom loss that means more than losing a limb. “I used to have nightmares as a kid. Dark places and everything smelled like sulfur. I know there were people there but I don’t remember any of them. I used to lash out when people tried to wake me up. It was pretty bad. Always afraid I was really actually awake and there was nothing in the world with substance. It was like trying to swim in open air.” Jo leaves the silence hanging open but neither of them fill it. 

Not yet.

.  
.  
.

“Has it ever really occurred to you? That the mind is a dark place?”

Anna hums in acknowledgement, “It has occurred to me that there are things in the universe worth being scared of.”

After that Jo gets quiet again. They lay there under the blue and metallic hues of the sky amidst the tall grasses and breathe. (Learn how to breathe again.) Eventually Anna decides that there isn’t anything left to say and tentatively, like a child standing and then walking all at once, reaches out for Jo’s hand. She takes it in her own and feels Jo bridge it. Hears Jo’s breath catch and finds eye contact; Jo is looking at her with reverence that cuts straight through every instinct she has not to smile, and finds the corners of her mouth lift up into what she hopes is a friendly gesture. It’s new, smiling, and she can tell Jo wants more from her.

But she can’t. She really can’t. And she lets go.

The loneliness she finds herself feeling is unprecedented. There has never been this aching gap where someone else was supposed to fit. Just thinking about melding with another person, let alone making a bond with them was usually enough to make her feel sick. But here she was, not only thinking about sharing that with Jo, but intentionally reaching out for her. She was by definition a prude, with a slight basket case, and Jo had no idea- couldn’t have any idea what she was getting into.

\--

Anna was something. Anna was amazing, all of her acceptance poised on five delicate fingertips. Too much to ask for. This was the second time they’d done this, and for the first time it wasn’t an accident.

Just from that brief contact she was able to pick up on the loneliness and the resentment. How Vulcan’s managed to plaster a passive face over all that emotional crap she’d never know. There was certainly a storm brewing behind that strong eyebrow game they had going on. 

(Anna deserves so much more.)

The way she touched things gently, every effort not to leave a mark. Treading softly. She bandages the wounded, doing everything in her power to heal the sick. Treading softly. The healed scar on the outside of her leg aches late at night when moons rise on water planets, the tide turning. Crashing softly. She was wrapped up in this amazing being and didn’t know how to get out.

\--

She knows she fixed this right the first time. The connection panel for the ship temperature regulation and life support is a secondary system but that doesn’t make it any less important. So she _knows_ she fixed it right the first time. It’s not a hard thing to mess up anyway. Something must be wrong with the dial holder. It’s slipping. But they don’t have any spares, so she’ll have to make due with borrowed medical jelly.

Its biodegradable but that doesn’t mean she wants it harden on her fingers. Once she sets the control she seals it up with jelly and moves on. She leaves the cover panel with one of the other engineering geeks, who probably graduated with grades too high to be babysitting pieces of spaceship. She tells them not to replace it before the medical jelly has set completely and heads to the closest exercise deck.

Days in space may have gotten routine pretty quick but being on the star ship hadn’t lost its novelty. And while mankind had long conquered artificial gravity it was still recommended that officers spent at least 2 hours engaged in exercise decks for every week they were in flight. 

If anything it was a great excuse to check out attractive Vulcans.

\--

Anna has her hair pinned up, the piece she’d missed curling at the nape of her neck and damp with sweat. She’d been on the exercise deck for a while already, and Jo was happy to watch from the running machines as Anna worked herself over in the sparring ring and quickly (sorry, efficiently) chased off all prospective partners. She couldn’t blame them. Anna was tough. And… Anna was smirking at her. 

Caught then. 

Smiling back she picked ramped the speed up on the machine to cover up the blush that she most definitely did not have.

\--

Maybe prompting Jo into the ring had been a bad idea. What she lacked in physical strength she made up for in flexibility and evasive strategy. Exertion was a new, but pleasant feeling. Aches that grew deeper than skin but into muscle and bone made her body hum pleasantly. 

Jo serves a kneeling blow, and Anna finds herself looking up at a backlit ring of blonde hair.

Jo asks once, “Submit?”

“Decline.”

She sees it in Jo’s eyes, Jo lives off of things like this. She probably got into her own fair share of fights at school. Jo moves slowly, giving Anna every chance to stop her if she wanted to. She doesn’t. 

She lets Jo crowd her onto her back. She gets strange feelings off of Jo’s hands, lingering scents of feelings and no thoughts. Jo is warm and exercise has made her skin flush a lovely shade of pink, and it’s beautiful. The stick is being pressed against her throat, and nothing is as sharply aware as Jo’s breath falling steadily against her face. She is breathing the same breaths as Jo, and the steady beat of her heart starts to feel a little bit painful.

“Submit.”

And this time Anna understands. She wants to. 

“Always.”

\--

Having Anna submit was going to make her smug for months.

She didn’t think she’d seen a more beautiful thing in her entire life. Red hair crowed like a halo around her head and all those different kinds of closeness. The kind of closeness that gets poured into art, colors, words, and sounds, the kind of close that rivals gravity. Physical closeness, the kind between people who trust each other, the kind that warms you from the outside in. And then there was mental closeness. The kind that Vulcans prided themselves on, the kind that was all the warmth of touch through colors and sounds. The kind Jo wanted.

Sparring had made both of them sweaty. The tacky kind of sweat that sticks to your skin and makes touching everything feel grimy. And while all of Anna’s edges and curves, the soft feel of her skin, were lit up in soft lights, Jo needed a shower. Anna was beautiful. She was ivory and grace and a hurricane of possibility.

She felt like a god, and it was a rush she’d never get used too.

\--

She relieves Meg and spares a glance at Anna. She was buried in her communications station, doing God knows what. The lights, and the light from the sun they’re passing overhead, casts her in a spotlight made of a million flecks. Gold, green, blue, and purple dance in the shell of her visible ear and wind themselves a vine along her waist. One day Jo wants to show her how beautiful she looks. Not just beneath her, but like this, casually and elegantly graceful.

It makes parts of Jo’s chest ache, makes parts of her light up, parts that she didn’t know she had. Just then Winchester and Novak enter the bridge, and she has to tear her thoughts away from Anna. She’s not going to screw this up.

\--

After shift, and after dinner, Jo drags her to play chess again.

“Do you know any other strategy games?”

“I know poker, you’d be good at poker.” Jo is smirking.

“I don’t know what poker is.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to teach you won’t we?”

And that’s how Anna ends up spending yet another night in close proximity to Jo, learning how to play poker for buttons (and not clothes, but Jo assures her that will come later). It’s late by the time she makes it back to her quarters.

Her possessions are sparse. She brought only clothing and a personal data PADD with her. Everything else was standard issue. Necessary. There is little possession-wise to treasure.

Her parents were long past. Killed by more powerful people for her Father’s place in the Council, her mother must have just gotten in the way. Castiel was the one who stepped in and raised her, taking her into his arms and treating her like his own. He was her saving grace, her protector, and her guide. He meant every world and every star that she could ever think of and then some. He knew her like the back of his hands, and his fact comes back to her: _”Jo Harvelle isn’t the worst person to be set up with.”_ Somewhere along the line it became known that she had not been fine on her own. The best lies the ones we tell ourselves. The ones she never questioned. 

She’ll have to thank him someday.

\--

Later that night, or later into the perpetual night, she tries to teach Anna about the joys of poker compared to chess. They both have to be counting cards, because the games fizzle and burn pretty quickly, but at least she’s a fast learner. With a brain like that why wouldn’t she be?

She’d been considering dropping out near the end of training. Up and leaving, exchanging a trek through the stars for one spent on old freeways and small town stops. But stars had won out. She wanted to see the clouds of gas and dust her father had fallen in love with, meet the people he’d loved even more. And Anna hadn’t disappointed. Jo wasn’t stupid; she knew what falling in love felt like. It felt like youthful smiles and an old school mullet. It felt like smooth lines and revamped muscle cars. It felt like a red haired Vulcan with too big brown eyes and lacking faith.

In love with a Vulcan. God help her, she’d never make it home.

\--

  
_Ex astris, auctus;  
(From the stars, growth)_  
Stardate 2677.21

They were set to dock at Taurus in two days. Anna busies herself with needless physicals and demanding procedures, things that require mechanical-ism.

(The first time she gets called a computer is the day she starts at the Academy. It’s not even lunch. Why he spontaneously gets a splitting headache is beyond her. It really is.) There are days where she would rather fit into stereotype, become a robot, a machine. Days would not seem as long as they did now.

Jo is leaning up against the wall when Anna steps out of the transporter, “Are you avoiding me, Doctor?”

Anna looks up from her PADD, stepping out, “Have you been waiting on this Deck since you got off duty?”

“I asked first.”

Anna waves her hand across the screen, the door to her quarters opening. “Hm,” she says holding the door open, “Come in if you like.”

Jo has never seen Anna’s quarters. There is no art, not like she thought there would be. There is no clutter. The room is so sparse it takes a moment for it to register that someone must live here. Anna pulls out a bottle of liquid. Not alcohol, but Jo figures if Anna likes it there must be better things. The Vulcan pours two glasses, and drinks all of it before pouring herself another.

She fiddles with the temperature control, turning it up, before turning back to look at Jo again. “I’m sorry if I come off as rude. I never meant to offend you.”

“It’s okay Anna. We’re all busy. I get it.”

“No,” Anna says, turning to sit on the edge of the desk, “I’ve been avoiding you.”

She can’t say she’s not disappointed. “I know. And I get it. I mean, I can be overbearing, hanging around all the time. I don’t blame you.”

“No. Jo stop. I have never loathed your company. It is just… you want things from me, emotionally, that I am not equipped to give you. I knew that from the start. But I have taken the time for thought and I need you to know now, that if you still desire my friendship and my company, I can make you no promises. I can give you no guarantees.”

“I knew that.” As she says it Jo thinks it sounds like a whisper. Nothing in the room moves and the steady whine of the ships engine reminds her that the whole room is moving. It’s the worst silence. One more whisper, “It doesn’t stop me.”

“It never will.”

Jo snorts, “Maybe one day.”

More time passes in horrible almost-silence. Jo thinks about what Anna said, about _I am not equipped to give you_ and knows that isn’t true. “Your mind. You’d have to open up your mind, wouldn’t you? Really open it.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Anna.”

Anna pours herself another glass. Jo puts hers down. Whatever it is Anna is trying to drown herself in it, like when she got drunk before her interview with Winchester. It sets everything in Jo on edge. Maybe it’s the wrong thing to say or maybe it's the only thing she needed to, the first words that pop into her head, but Jo looks up and meets Anna’s eyes for the first time all afternoon. What she says is, “Whatever it is, you know you always have a home here with me.”

(Anna does her best not to think of anything at all)

\--

Anna forgets where she was in silent prayer, can’t remember what the first line was; where to begin. The room seems so far out of reach, and the glass in her hand is being squeezed hard so the delicate pads of her fingers are aching.

There is nothing left to focus on. Not anything she wants to focus on, or maybe there are too many things to think. That one small scar on Jo's leg. The white noise creeping back in. The universe turning around outside seven layers of steel and isolation. It's all one. It's all too much.

It’s the wrong thing to do and as she does it she knows it, but she retreats. She will not fight a battle she knows she will lose. How Jo leaves may forever be a mystery, but when she falls back into herself Jo is gone, her glass replaced on the table and the space where she was sitting tidied up. Vacant like no one ever lived there. Just another patch of space.

She can feel the rising panic, the flicker of a seed of hope and bone crushing fear returning. A cocktail of heavy repressed emotion swelling in her limbs and dissolving in her veins; invading her capillaries and overwhelming thought processes. She needs someone to meld with. She needs Castiel.

Brushing a stray piece of red hair back into place she slips into a looser state, a half trance that puts a tap on everything she wants to destroy in fear and in flight and in loneliness. With any luck no one will think anything of it. For some reason appearances still seem important. That's what everything in life was, appearances. Appear calm. Appear in control. Appear engaged. Appear still. Appear unfeeling. She didn't know how to appear that way, not now.

She was always annoyed when Castiel stopped beta programming her into the door controls, and it’s even more of an inconvenience now. When he opens the door his face is flushed and his uniform is rumpled in such a way that screams _Dean was here_.

She’s not even sure the door is fully closed behind her before their fingers are pressed against their respective meld points.

\--

_Castiel appears as energy. Vaporous and electric, soothing on every raw ended and sparking nerve. Pulses of comfort and calm thread themselves into the connection like heartbeats; or footsteps. There is another presence here that they are not in control of. The brine where minds meet is another thing in itself. Castiel takes solid shape with a burst of light. And Jo thinks_ she’s _a showoff._

_Castiel approaches her with a face neutral enough to grant him temporary citizenship to Switzerland. The freighted animal in her is wary, too wanting and craving familial touch. He knows this. Of course he knows this. Cradling her head against his chest and being fiercely protective. There’s a reason Dean calls him is Guardian Angel. Klashausu._

_“What did she do to you?”_

_“Nothing. She did nothing.”_

_But even as she says this they both know it isn’t true. Jo was everything she needed to be. A good friend, a careful lover, an honest soldier._

_“Is that all, ko-fu?”_

_“She has become an installment. Like a line in prayer. What do I do? Sa’mekh?_

_A flood of Jo related memories, thoughts, and emotions pour in through her side of the bond. Castiel closes his eyes, weathering through too much at once. “Oh, Anna.”_

_Oh, Anna. Oh, Anna. Oh, Anna._

_Castiel’s eyes shine white blue, “Anna you’re in_ love. _”_

 

\--

Dean finds Jo on the exercise deck, going toe to toe with a punching bag twice her size. It’s a great metaphor.

“What’s eating away at you, sweetheart?”

Jo starts, and falls into an attention. “Perhaps it’s stress, sir.” She grabs a nearby towel and runs it over her face. “Maybe I should report to Med Bay and get checked for Madness.”

“You feel like showering with your clothes on, cadet?”

Jo gives him a small smile, “No, sir.”

“Well then it wouldn’t have anything to do with why Anael is currently engaged in a deep meld with my First Officer, would it?”

“I suppose it could be, sir.”

“They’re not supposed to do that, y’know.” He picks up a gravity sphere and throws it up into the air, catching it as it falls back down. “He’s supposed to be available to me 24/7. So I guess you could call melding a fire hazard.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

Dean brushes it off, though he shouldn’t. “He really is worried about her.” Frowning, he replaces the sphere and picks up another one. A larger one. “She doesn’t like company. At least that’s what they call it. Damn Vulcans. Anyways, I suppose this is the part where I ask if you come here often.”

“Not really. I’m new to the neighborhood.” He throws the ball to her and she catches it, doubling over under the weight. “I think the Captain only let me on board ‘cause I’m cute.”

Dean smiles at her sadly, grunting as he throws it back. “Must be.”

“She talked to me about it.” The damn thing just gets heavier, it’s like a boulder of death. “I think I may have freaked her out a bit.”

Dean laughs, “Oh man, freaked out Vulcans are the best. What’d you do?”

“I’m sure you’ll hear about it. Stop trying to change the mood.”

The banter goes back in forth, never coming full circle. Eventually Dean gets a call on his comm from Castiel and clocks out. The gravity sphere is still swollen with extra weight and even together they cannot lift it. Someone else will put it back after it’s deflated.

No one is in the showers, so Jo takes her time. Using up all the hot water and obscene amounts of soap. She takes so long that next shift comes off. Something like space grime still making her feel rough and unclean.

She’d messed up. Not only did it hurt, but it was embarrassing. She hadn’t been rejected like that since she asked out Bela Talbot in the second grade. Maybe she can get Kevin and Meg to cover the rest of her shifts. She’d check into Med Bay, call in sick, if only that wasn’t the most inconvenient place to be.

She crawls into bed that night and stares into the darkness until the alarm goes off again. It’s another day in paradise.

\--

Yesterday’s uniform smells good enough to her, but she gets a couple of looks on her way to the bridge with her second cup of coffee. Maybe news traveled fast. She hoped not. Dean was lounging in the Captain’s chair, looking bored. They’d be approaching the planet soon. After her sleepless night Jo couldn’t wait to beam down and start self-medicating. Meg Masters was already sitting where Anna was supposed to keep her company.

Dean caught her looking, and gave a minute shrug. Either they were still in another meld or Anna didn’t want to see her. She thinks she’ll be sick.

She buries herself in the console, checking computer systems and double checking their arrival sequencing. Kevin peers over her shoulder.

He points to a connection sequence, “That’s wrong.”

“What?”

He points again, “You see those numbers there? They’re set for docking at a much larger planet, one with five times the gravity of Taurus VI. If we attempt to land there we’ll overload the thruster and blow out the artificial gravity programs, maybe even life support. You weren’t paying attention to this were you?”

“Not really.”

“Well somebody tried messing around with the shortcuts and nearly got us killed. Take over my station and I’ll fix it for you, good?”

“Yeah fine I think. Thanks, Kev.”

They switch seats. There isn’t anything on radar. There won’t be. Not until they come closer to Taurus. It’s the perfect station for her. Nothing to do and nothing to screw up. She can’t believe she missed that. She clearly can’t function on no sleep, and the stress surely isn’t helping.

(Against your better judgment.)

“Requesting leave to visit Med Bay, Captain.”

Dean looks up from his PADD, “Of course, have Sam check you out. He’ll take good care of you.” He can probably hone in on where her makeup doesn’t do enough to cover the already forming darkness under her eyes and where the skin around her cheekbones feels like it’s pulled to tight.

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

\--

Anna isn’t there so she gets handed off to Sam. “There’s some sleep patches. You can either take them here or back in your quarters, but if you’re not up by the time we beam down I’m coming to find you.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to make it back, just… don’t let anybody touch me.” He nods, finishing his scan and filing away her data with a small smile.

“Course. Just sleep it off.” He leaves, pulling the privacy curtain her bed.

She pulls the sleeve off the black one first. It’s the heaviest and will keep her from having too many bad dreams. It suckles at her skin, kind of like a leech. She leans back against the familiar feel of a bio bed (days where she spent too much time watching Anna’s hands work on her latest patient) and lets the sleep patch lull her into unconsciousness.

\--

When Anna and Castiel slip out of the meld and back into their own bodies Dean is waiting for them. The smell of pancakes and orange juice wafts in curls of steam and lovely heat. It’s second best, but it still feels like coming home.

“You guys were out of it for a really long time. Ordered you food.”

Castiel takes Dean’s hand and stands up. “Thank you, Dean. After this I think we should go down to Med Bay and have Sam clear us.” He sips some of the juice and tastes some of the syrup from his plate. “How close are we to Taurus VI?”

“We’ll be there today.” Dean takes a pancake off of Cas’ plate, rolling it up like a burrito and shoving it in his mouth. The man has no gag reflex and no shame. “I’m a little more worried about Jo though. I gave her leave to visit Med Bay earlier, don’t know how she is now. She looked like crap.”

And no, she’s definitely not listening. Only she is.

Cas starts eating, methodically cutting his pancakes into squares and triangles. “Elaborate.”

“I know how someone looks when they’ve got a world on their shoulders, Cas. She had a universe balanced on one fingertip. Admirable but not acceptable. Dark circles under her eyes, I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t get any sleep at all last night, generally distracted, I don’t know what was up but it wasn’t Jo.” The steam from her pancakes has ceased continuing to curl into small clouds. They’ll go cold. It’s a waste.

Castiel turns his focus back on Anna, “I understand if you’d rather not go to Med Bay. Sam can come to us.”

“No. It’s okay. I should…” She should what? Tell Jo she’s sorry? Tell her there’s nothing she’d rather have more than the human girl to be safe in her arms? Show her Castiel, show her home (In the swirls of her coffee cup, this time with cream so she knows. So she’ll always know.), show her everything she could ever want to see.

Briefly there is a moment where she’s returned to the HoloDeck amidst one of Jo’s scenes. They are sitting cross legged amongst tall dark rocks that jut and threaten from below. Jo has them forever suspended, and when she looks down there is no ground of which to speak. She tells stories that Anna can never forget. Here it is both imagined and much like something real. She half expects there to be waves crashing, but the Ocean does not appear to exist here.

Jo is nothing like an Ocean, but she is everything like the sky.

She is the sky that resists crashing, either too afraid or too kind to fall. She is her own Atlas, bound in chains that Anna could never hope to break.

_“Home here with me.”_

She hears what those words were really meant to be: I want you.  
I am in need of you.

(I am the sky as much as you are the stars in jet black. I live to make you free.)

That’s what Jo has done, Jo has set her free, but she has been a caged animal and only knows captivity. Freedom is not something she’s dreamed to have.  
Her moments of clarity are brief as she and Castiel make their way to Med Bay and closer to where she knows Jo will be. She feels weak, and stronger than she’s ever been. Armed with only things she didn’t know before somehow it manages to feel like a great secret. The weight of it fills in the carefully etched lines of her skin and makes her feel whole. There is only one thing missing. There is nothing to cauterize. Med Bay is nearly empty. There are some people from engineering and some science officers milling about. Sam is puttering about with a ball of fur that has no face

“Sam?”

Sam smiles, “Hey guys.” He sets the tribble into its makeshift paper nest and picks up a data pad shrugging awkwardly in his massive frame. “Sorry, but its procedure.”

“We understand.”

There is one bed with a drawn privacy curtain. If Jo is anywhere she is behind that screen.

Sam catches her watching before moving his scanner over to her side and takes her readings.

“Everything looks good. Your turn Cas.”

Castiel is a model patient. Just as he is a model of other things. He is a model Lieutenant, a model scientist, and a model Father.

He and Sam pay no attention to her as she crosses the Med Bay. The white sheet beckons to her like every secret she never wanted to know. She wants to see Jo and she also wants to forget her.

Maybe the knot in her abdomen will go away; the gentle sting in her heart will remove itself like a splinter. Splinters were mistakes one made when they weren’t paying enough attention. Stings were made when one poked around in the wrong places.

But none of that, and none of what Castiel had tried to show her, explained any of the feeling away. She still wanted to spar with Jo, play chess with Jo, and maybe one day meld with Jo. She already knows that Jo’s mind is a thing of beauty, and if she has to use the word love then she supposes Jo’s mind is the first thing she fell in love with. It’s complexity and it’s form. It was the jagged rocks and the oceans of will power, Jo’s mind is just as controlled as it is free. Reckless, calculating, caring, brave, she was everything that anyone could be and more. More because Anna already knows she loves her, and that should make her special. She just doesn’t know what she’s going to do about it.

She can feel Sam come to stand beside her, feels him want to touch her shoulder but hold back.

“She’s behind there you know.”

“Yes. That is why I’m standing here, so confused as to what to do while I cause her to become so upset she cannot sleep and has to rely on med patches in order to regain what I can only assume to be the semblance of function.”

She can see the look, even though she isn’t even looking. The large sad eyes and the long face. Sam was always a romantic, and as a result his lovers have been struck down by tragedy.

“When she wakes up I think you should make every effort to see her before she beams down.” He sighs, and this time doesn’t refrain from putting a large hand on her shoulder. It’s not that she minds, the Winchesters are as good a family she’s ever had. “Dean sees a lot of the old him in her, that’s why she was recruited.”  
(But what he means is that history repeats itself. Stars that explode in supernovae always come back together in the form of many different stars. Some things aren’t just facts, but patterns of life. Poets say a lot of things, but you think that for once they might just be right.)

\--

Black sleep patches do not in fact keep the dreams out. If anything, they make the problem worse.

It stinks. The smell of burning is tangible in the heavy smoke and falling ash. She chokes on the air and cannot move. The ash is probably all that remains of people, people she knew, people she loved, people she ought to have been there to protect. This is guilt, hopelessness, and terror. This is a prison and she cannot escape.

Somewhere in the haze there’s a part of her that knows this is only a dream, that knows she’s panicking, knows that if she can’t get a grip enough to stop that this it won’t just go away. The nightmare is a living thing and it threatens to close off her lungs and cripple sight. Every inch of skin is another ache and every organ is another pain. She wonders briefly just how many organs she could live without, thinks about giving them all away before she feels it.

There is a sliver of something, something else with a pulse that shines through even the densest layers of cover. It could be the sun, it could the atomic bomb. Jo finds herself wanting to see that light; and at last she is able to stand. It fills the ache in her chest and relieves the waterlogged feeling pushing at the casing of her skull.

She wants to ask it to stay.

\--

The light comes back in the form of a million suns.

The observation deck is abandoned, the fading lights mimic dusk but don’t stop the tide of universes flooding past the windows like the crashing of blue and orange waves. They’re beautiful but she can’t bring herself the appreciate them. Her blonde hair dances in ventilation, and in the still quiet has her on edge.

“Jo?”

She doesn’t have to look, doesn’t want to. Anna is standing there breaking the silence, turning back the time from twilight into afternoon.

_(‘Isn’t that what you were hoping for?’_

_I don’t know now.)_

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“I wanted to talk to you about earlier. I am sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

“Yes there is. I was- not the right state of mind to hold that conversation and furthermore I abandoned you.” Anna brushes one long sleeved arm against Jo’s side. (I want you to know that I’m here now. I want you to know that I was wrong.) “I should not have.”

It’s just as hard for Jo to tear her eyes away from the window as it is to look Anna in the eye. Anna is still beautiful, her clear face marred with lines of worry.

Not so emotionless after all.

“Anna, really, it’s okay. There are things you do for friends, and forgiveness is one of them.”

\--

Jo, lit in the lights of a million passing stars, is one of the most serene things Anna thinks she’s ever seen. Jo belongs there, home among the ever twinkling lights of their jet black sky. She’s going to make things right this time; she’s not going to turn away. If she has to get down on one knee and plead for Jo to forgive her then that is the length she must take.

Jo is worth more than the pride she pretends not to have.

“Jo?”

Jo does not stiffen, or flinch. Rather something in her seems to relax, some invisible weight crashing down from her shoulders and sinking into the floor. Her eyes stay fixed on the stars.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

She steps close enough that she could touch Jo. The coolness of her back tickling against the heat of her alien skin.

“I wanted to talk to you about earlier.” (I could touch you, t’sai. I could break your bones and refuse to mend your skin. But I won’t.)

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

“Yes there is. I was- not the right state of mind to hold that conversation and furthermore I abandoned you.” She falters in conviction, brushing the back of one arm along the knobs of Jo’s spine. It is paradise there, skin to clothed skin. Contact quenches the last piece of doubt Anna has ever had about love. Love between, friends, and maybe one day lovers. “I should not have.”

Jo turns to meet her, two pairs of brown eyes connecting in the dark. “Anna, really, it’s okay.” For the first time but not the last time Anna sees quasars in the star traps of Jo’s eyes. She quivers on a frequency that no one has ever matched. “There are things you do for friends, and forgiveness is one of them.”

And as Jo forgives her all that she can think is echo. Echo back to me, echo with me, call into the void and see where I call back, keep calling-

Echo.  
Echo.  
 **Echo.**

Wave after wave.

She feels her knees shake, trying not to give out.

I said that I would beg on my knees for your forgiveness, but I have that now. What am I begging for?

“I thank you for your forgiveness, but I think there is more I need to say.”

Hesitation is for people who aren’t Anna Milton, for people who have less faith.

“I am not deserving of such unreserved kindness, of such unconditional care as you have shown me. There is a hope that lives in each of us; the hope that we will die for something, that we will find understanding, perhaps that we will live on in memory and legend. I too have a hope, Jo Harvelle. I hope that you’ll still have me.”

“Anna…”

“If not as your partner then continuing as your friend.”

“Anna, I can’t- thank you.”

Jo’s hands reach out, rubbing gently at the sensitive skin under her sleeves. The same wrists she pinned to the sparring mat not too long ago, that have written equations and fired phasers. Offense and defense blur together, becoming more than the sum of their parts.

She wants to touch Jo, to really touch her. She wants to map out all the crevices and know Jo’s unreachable places. To do so would be a privilege she has not earned, with her doubt and her fear. But none of that seems to matter to Jo.

“Because it is I who has much to be thankful for.”

She knows Jo won’t touch her without her say so. So it’s Anna who takes Jo’s fingers and connects them with her own. Ozh’esta, the Vulcan kiss, is chaste and polite by human standards but a flush reaches Anna’s face just the same. Jo’s heartbeat beats beneath that fragile skin, and that is yet another thing to love.


End file.
